So this weekend I was invited to join some friends who would be teaming up at the Global Game Jam to stay up for as much of 48 hours as possible and make a video game, no matter how ****, in that time. They knew I am interested in composing so they were like "ayyy u wanna come" and I was like "ye."

It's been a LOT of fun! I've gotten to experiment with filtering white noise and instrument samples for sound effects, and I've gotten free reign to compose an OST of my own.

Well, it's obviously not the greatest work ever, but I'm happy with it!:

I pretty much did the Super Mario Sunshine thing where I just took one theme and used variants of it for all of the tracks. The concept has been fun to work with because for the most part it just needs slightly spoopy bg music, but every now and then you switch into SOUL MODE and the music gets more intense. Soooo I made two versions of the theme, one simpler with just two voices and one with more going on. Plus a spooky harp title theme version with whooshy sounds because I like whooshy sounds.

I am very excited I got the opportunity to actually apply what I spent years learning! I used the chord progressions I learned about in harmony and the production software I learned about in I-forget-that-class's-name and I really hope this gets me off my butt and gets me to start finishing stuff more often.

[[made a new thread bc i hadnt updated the other since 2014...... tells u a lot right there]]

Anyone else who has experience working with sound effects have any advice? It's been really fun but my attempts at footsteps sound novice for sure. Luckily most games at this event don't even HAVE audio so it's not like I'm gonna be judged for it, but I'd like to learn more. Or is it just practice makes perfect?

I like the idea of the theme recurring through tracks. The only thing I can suggest is try to make sure it flows well together so you could make a medley from each variant, or at least so that the music can loop over and over without being stale since its a game. I mean its not super easy for such a short deadline, but thats literally all the advice I could give you that you prolly already knew but may not have thought about.

^ Actually, that's exactly what it does do. The second and third tracks you hear are perfectly looping (in game at least - probably not in this cut I threw together) and perfectly synced and the game switches between them depending on what mode you're in. That's why they're pretty much only different in texture and intensity, but not key or tempo or melody or anything - so they can swap and sound good. But I'm glad you felt that way too!

E: so we finished the game! It's called "Occult-eration." 2spoopy4u, I know; everything about the game is just too spooky. It's on the Global Game Jam website along with all the other games peeps have come up with. (Not sure if linking would be considered advertising-y or spammy so I'll refrain, but PM me if you're interested!)

I'm so pleased with the audio I can't express enough how happy I am with how well the two tracks sync with one another and how well the transition works.

I have officially composed an Original Soundtrack, Do Not Steal, complete with both music and effects, for a video game that exists. Even if it is a very simple 48 hour rush job, it's actually well put together and I'm super happy. Dreams DO COME TRUE

Okay, so first run of the game crashed when I alt+F4'd out of it and then it wouldn't launch properly until I rebooted (go Unity) but I got it to run okay after that. Immediate stuff:

Should say 'press space' or something on title screen, obviously, although most any button besides ESC should progress the menus. That intro melody was great, I take it you didn't know they'd want to loop it over the menu though. Definitely could've used an intro and then a separate loop track to continue the melody afterwards.

The music stuff in-game really works fine as a short loop, no problems there, I enjoyed the SFX of what I recall.

Thoughts/suggestions on the game, design-wise:

The whole dropping meter for powering your soul-mode thing seems like a programmer hack for the problem of the lantern guys being an ineffective threat. Should've depleted much more slowly, been able to launch while less than full. It should also rise up more slowly, and you should probably be able to pump it back up faster by collecting scattered items. Make player's soul get smaller or slower based on how full the meter is, and create dynamics which reward cancelling out for tactical reasons.

Make the lantern searchlights more effective by increasing their quantity, optimizing their search behavior, or both. Include different searcher threats. Perhaps make some of the chanting guys actually fakes who grab you and holler for help to attract other search light guys, and you have to frantically button mash to break free and run away.

Make enemy souls move more slowly. Give more noticable warning signs like an overall screen flash or a sound effect) when one as launched so the player isn't just taking shots in the dark, possibly use stereo/surround to indicate which side of screen they're coming from?

Give the player a speed-up button that increases his soul's speed for faster meter consumption.

Give the player soul power-ups that increase his soul's size. Put in a meter that charges up more with each soul collected/stopped, which when full can be used as a special once-off powerup, one which may affect the speed of enemy souls, seekers, and the effectiveness of the player's own soul.

Decent execution overall for a concept, I'd love to see it taken further and made feasible as a game.

I muttered 'light as a board, stiff as a feather' for 2 days straight and now I've ascended, ;aughing at olympus and zeus is crying

I'm working on another thing!!! I actually have been working on it for a couple months but only putting in like 10mins-1hr a day after work. Here's a WIP of the beginning part, which I am very happy with so far:

(It's a weird embed link to play from bc my tumblr theme has been doing dumb **** with its audio player so just don't worry about it)

HEYYY ONLY TOOK ME HALF A YEAR TO FINISH OUTLINING THIS ONE PIECE LMAO

not the finished product bc have lots of editing/balancing/producing/finishing work to do (this is just recorded from raw midi) - as before - but im not gonna pretend im not happy with what i have. Just. yknow. give me another year to do all of the rest of it lmao

So, my mom got me a book of piano arrangements of Zelda songs that are pretty above my piano skill level last year for Christmas, and I've been slowly trying to learn to play them. I was playing Saria's Song when the pretentious music major in me was like "hmm..... this dominant chord is missing its leading tone and that's frankly unacceptable." So I made a couple alterations to the arrangement that I think make more harmonic sense.

Basically, in its original alteration you just do the same finger pattern for all of the chords on the left hand, which only gives the first and fifth of the chord. I re-voiced a couple of the chords to give them the third - most importantly the dominant chord which was missing its leading tone, which leads nicely back to the next chord. The voices of the left hand chords in my arrangement are a lot smoother, rather than having all 3 voices jumping around. I learned a lot about chord arrangement in harmony class in college and decided to apply it. I don't think my version is "better" per se, but it does bring out the underlying harmonic progression more clearly.

Also, the root of one of the chords doesn't sound good on piano IMO (it's a non-chord-tone which is very dissonant; the original arrangement of Saria's Song from OoT does not emphasize the roots nearly as much as the piano iteration does so that note did not translate well) so I changed it to a more consonant chord tone.

I generated an MP3 of the 2 different arrangements, original first then my alterations, if anyone is interested. The changes are pretty subtle, but I literally spent all day dicking around with this song's voice leading, so I'm posting this to validate that effort. Here u go:

Interesting experiment there. I feel like your chord changes make it feel significantly more jovial/bawdy, though I prefer the root notes of the original version a bit more. FWIW I like a lot lower key velocity and a denser/more present cabinet tone on piano, and that may affect your perception of how the root note sounds out.

I muttered 'light as a board, stiff as a feather' for 2 days straight and now I've ascended, ;aughing at olympus and zeus is crying

Sorry for taking an age to respond; I dig the feedback/conversation, especially since this was 100% experimentation and me dicking around with chord voicings to see what it sounded like.

I made a visual representation to make it easier to talk about what I was messing around with (grey notes are what I changed from, red notes are what I changed to; you can see I really only changed 1 tone per chord):

I've always thought it was cool how changing just the voicing in a chord can change its impact in a musical context. In the first chord I edited, rather than leaping up to the octave I decided to flesh out the chord (which also allows for both of the upper voices in the left hand to lead nicely rather than jumping around, and gives the chord a third and fifth which is nice), and the second I brought the middle voice down to fill in the third of the chord / leading tone because that's what really gives a dominant chord its UMPH leading back to the tonic. I liked this leading because it's in the same register as the very next note as well, so it goes nicely into it.

It's definitely worth noting that the original chords are *intentionally* lacking a third, which gives them a sort of playful ambiguity (it's not explicitly defined as major or minor, but you implicitly hear it one way because of its context). Adding the third, which I did on a few of them, takes away from that intentional ambiguity, but I like the harmonic umph they give especially with that leading tone. I also just like playing chords with a little more variety in fingering rather than just ROOT-FIFTH-OCTAVE ROOT-FIFTH-OCTAVE ROOT-FIFTH-OCTAVE jumping around.

Oh, and the root I was talking about changing is the C toward the end that I changed down to a B. I honestly can't decide which iteration I like better, because it's not meant to be a note that's particularly emphasized in the N64 track, so in this context where it's the root of a chord which is heavily emphasized it makes a bigger difference and I keep flip-flopping on what my preference is.

I'm thinking what I might do if I feel like messing around further is use somewhat of a combination of the 2, since the chord pattern repeats 3 times. Maybe using the playful ones as-is for the first couple iteration and then changing it up to the variants with the leading tone for the last repeat leading into the finale. Or vice versa, depending on which feels like it has more musical drive. I feel like this piece benefits a lot from variety........ I'm thinking original pattern - my pattern - original pattern? That high / low / high contrasts nicely with the low / high / low melody.... HMM OK I WANT TO MESS AROUND WITH THIS NOW. MAYBE RECORD IT MESELF?? NOTHIN PUMPS THE CREATIVE JUICES LIKE PLAYING AROUND WITH ZELDA SONGS. UPDATES LATER THIS WEEK PROBS LMAO